PORTRAIT OF THE ANTISEMITE
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beat and torture the Jews without fear: the most they can do is to
appeal to the laws of the Republic; but the laws are not hard. The
sadistic attraction to the Jew which the antisemite feels is so strong
that it is not unusual to see one of these sworn enemies of Israel
surround himself with Jewish friends. Of course he calls them "excep–
tional Jews," he says: "They aren't like the others." In a prominent
place in the studio of the painter whom I mentioned a little while
ago and who in no way reproached the butchers of Lublin, there was
a portrait of a Jew who was a dear friend of his and whom the
Gestapo had executed. But such protestations of friendship are not
sincere, for there is no idea in their conversation of sparing the "good
Jews"; and while recognizing some virtues in those they know, they
do not admit the fact that their interlocutors might also have met
some who were equally good. In fact, it pleases them to protect these
few people by a kind of inversion of their sadism; they like to keep
before their eyes the living picture of these people whom they despise.
Antisemitic women often feel a mixture of repugnance and sexual at–
traction for Jews. One whom I knew had intimate relations with a
Polish Jew. She sometimes got into bed with him and let him caress
her breasts and shoulders, but nothing more. She got enormous pleas–
ure from the fact that he was respectful and submissive and also
from the fact that she divined his violently frustrated and humiliated
desire. She afterwards had normal sexual relations with other men.
In the words "a beautiful Jewess" there is a specific sexual conno–
tation, very different from that which is understood in the words
"a beautiful Romanian," "a beautiful Greek woman" or "a beautiful
American." The phrase "a beautiful Jewess" has a kind of flavor
of rape and massacre. The beautiful Jewess is the woman whom the
Czar's cossacks drag by the hair through the streets of a flaming
village; and the special works devoted to descriptions of flagellation
give Jewesses a place of honor. But we do not have to search through
esoteric literature. From Rebecca in Ivanhoe down to the Jewess in
"Gilles," not to leave out those of Ponson du Terrail, Jewesses have
a well defined function in the most serious novels. Frequently raped
or beaten, they sometimes succeed in escaping dishonor by death, but
that is as it should be; those who keep their virtue are docile servants
or humiliated women in love with indifferent Christians who marry
Aryans. No more is needed to show the sexually symbolic importance
of the Jewess in folklore.
With destruction his function, the antisemite-a sadist pure of
heart-is in the depths of his soul a criminal. What he desires and
